Iran Says Iraqis Raided a Nuclear Plant

AP

Published: November 18, 1987

MANAMA, Bahrain, Nov. 17—
Iranian news outlets reported that Iraqi warplanes raided an unfinished Iranian nuclear power plant today, and that an Iranian nuclear official said the attack could lead to a release of radiation across international borders.

Iraq announced it had raided a chemical complex at Bushire, near the site, but did not announce any attack on the nuclear plant.

Iran's official press agency, monitored in Cyprus, quoted the energy official, Reza Amrollahi, as saying the plant contained nuclear material. The raid might lead to ''the same transfrontier radioactive release and radiological consequences as the Chernobyl nuclear accident,'' he said, referring to the Soviet disaster in 1986.

There was no independent confirmation of a raid on the nuclear plant or of the presence of nuclear material at the site, which had been bombed at least five times since 1984. U.S. Experts Discount Threat

In Washington, American nuclear experts said the reported bombing could not produce a Chernobyl-like disaster.

Gary Milhollin, a University of Wisconsin law professor and former Pentagon nuclear consultant, said Iran's two reactors at Bushire ''are not complete, so they do not have any high level radioactive material in them.'' He said the Iranians ''could have put fresh reactor fuel in it, if they had some, but unless the reactor is operating, it does not create the kind of radioactivity that is dangerous to health.''

''The dangerous materials from Chernobyl were products of the fission reaction, which occurs when a reactor operates,'' he said.

Dan Butler, a Department of Energy spokesman, said: ''There is no reactor in Iran. I've checked with three sources.''

None of the experts said they had any reports of radioactivity from the site.

Construction at the plant, which was begun under the Shah, was interrupted in 1979, when the Islamic fundamentalist regime took power in Teheran. Iran Reports 11 Killed

Iran said 11 people were killed in the raid today.

The Iranian news agency said that Mr. Amrollahi, president of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, had sent an ''urgent protest note'' to Hans Blix, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, asking him to rush a team of experts to the scene to monitor the effects of the raid.

In Vienna, a spokesman for the energy agency said he knew nothing about a request for such a team. But the spokesman, James Daglish, said an Iranian representative was seeking a meeting with Mr. Blix. No one answered the telephone at the Iranian mission there.

Iraq said in a military communique that its jets had conducted two raids against ''the Iranian industrial and chemical production complex at Bushire,'' 37 miles from the nuclear installation. An Iraqi News Agency broadcast hinted that the industrial complex was engaged in making and storing chemical weapons.

Iran said last year that it had moved ''fissionable material'' into the plant and warned an attack could set off another Chernobyl disaster. The explosion and fire at the Soviet nuclear plant in April 1986 killed 31 people and sent a cloud of radioactive material around the world.

Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency said earlier that they could not confirm the assertion about fissionable material because no on-site inspection had been made.

The Teheran radio said that among the 11 killed at the unfinished plant were ''one of the plant's top nuclear power experts'' and a West German engineer.